Tag Archives: kenpo

First Professional Martial Arts Instructor!

Congrats to Professional Martial Arts Instructor…
Lonnie Muhammad!

Lonnie managed to ace the test with a 94.7% score.
Man,
well done!

Lonnie is an old matrixing student,
He was one of the first fellows to get on board,
when MonsterMartialArts.com got started some ten years ago.
I remember him well because
he was teaching self defense to security personnel.
He was using Matrix Aikido and Monkey Boxing techniques
way back then.

Here is his win from way back then…

Mr. Case;
I wanted to let you know that the courses did arrive just before Xmas. Needless to say, I haven’t been able to spend enough time yet with them. You know something: just 5 minutes into the Aikido dvd (which I threw in right away to make sure the dvds were working), I felt as if I had been hit with 2 YEARS of training in the aiki/jujutsu arts.
I conducted a Matrix Aikido training class for a Security Team at a local manufacturing plant. I tailored the training according to their Use Of Force policy. As you know they need control and takedown skills. I knew Matrix Aikido would be the answer. The training plan you shared was boss. The class went so smoothly. The participants learned very quickly. By the end of the class you could see techniques of Monkey Boxing coming through. They were also able to create their own techniques. There was one female officer in the class who asked to become my private student. She was throwing, locking and taking down guys twice her size. The Security Supervisor wants me to come back and with more participants! I’ll keep you posted.
Lonnie

Again,
incredibly well done, Lonnie.
Thank you.

Now,
for all you guys and gals reading this,
and thinking about teaching martial arts,
being a Professional Martial Arts Instructor
will give you a considerable edge
when teaching martial arts.
You can walk into any company,
any health club,
anywhere,
and you have the certificates to back up your knowledge.
Your knowledge has been proven by actual test.

And,
if you have ordered
The Professional Martial Arts Instructor book
you can take the test for free.
it’s part of the deal when you buy the book.
You just have to email me at aganzul@gmail.com
and ask to take the test.

To let you know,
I am still putting the test into digital format,
so I still have to email you the test,
you take it and email it back,
and I then grade it.

If you don’t pass,
you’ll have your mistakes,
you can study and take the test again.
No problem.

This isn’t me scamming for money
by charging huge amounts of money
to take and retake tests
and all that.
This is me validating people who are serious about the martial arts,
in a way that will benefit them
career wise,
financially,
or just in the area of achieved knowledge.
People who know what the martial arts are all about
who know the real reasons behind the martial arts,
are MUCH better martial artists.
They shine.
So,
write me if you have read the book and are ready.

OR…
get the book and get the real knowledge,
and get ready to take the PMAT test.

AND…
if you have any doubts,
you can go here and take a sample of the test…

I’l tell you right now,
you probably won’t score too well,
most people don’t,
but that’s the point of it all,
to find out what you don’t know,
and get you to know it.

I tell you this…
knowledge is the most precious commodity in the universe.
And,
the martial arts have been taught
monkey see monkey do
for so long,
that the knowledge is confuzzled,
bemused and idiocratic.

So hit that link,
find out if you know anything,
and get started on the path of VERIFIED knowledge.

No more fakers who talk a good game,
a fellow with a PMAT certificate is PROVEN!
He is one smart cookie,
and that’s the truth.
Lonnie will attest to that!

Martial Arts and the Revolutionary War of 1776!

Happy Fourth of July!
Make sure you work out extra hard,
so you can say you deserve your freedom.
What do I mean by that?
Read on, brother and sisters…

Back in 1777 – 1778,
there was this place called Valley Forge.
General Washington was backed into a freezer,
the British were kicking back by the hearth and sipping rum,
and them silly colonists
were freezing their BUTTS off!
Seriously.

As the winter wore on,
Washington’s army starved,
their clothes rotted and fell off,
and their shoes gave way.
They wrapped their feet in rags,
and left bloody footprints in the snow.

So get the picture.
Old men with grey beards,
young men,
mere boys of maybe 12 or 13,
gathered around the campfire.
They put their feet to the coals,
and read this thing called ‘Common Sense.’
They weren’t an educated bunch,
so they had to explain things to each other,
while they massaged their feet,
and retied the rags around them.

If somebody had to go on guard duty,
they would throw their tricorn hats on the ground
and walk on the brims
stomping their feet to keep the circulation going.

Toes were lost,
frozen on the foot.
Limbs were lost,
sawed off without painkillers
and tossed outside a tent into a pile.
People died,
froze to death,
stacked like wood
to await a thaw
so they could be buried.

It was cold.

But,
when winter was over,
those colonists marched out of that frozen hell of a valley.
They weren’t afraid,
because they had survived
the worst mother nature could throw at them.
In fact,
they were hardened.
They were tempered.
They were tougher than the British
who had spent that winter sipping rum
and telling ribald stories
and making fun of those fools
a couple of valleys over
who didn’t know enough
to come in out of the cold.

That was the turning point of the revolutionary war.
There were lots of other things that contributed,
spies and Von Steuben,
citizens that sent guns and ammo and food,
but it was that frozen winter
when the farmer/soldier of the United States
found out what he was made of
that made the difference.
Death didn’t seem like much
after that winter at Valley Forge.

Fast forward to today,
you don’t have to freeze,
you don’t have to march through the snow without shoes,
all you have to do is go to class,
stand in the horse stance for a while,
practice punching people,
endure a few bruises and a black eye.
That’s all.

Because that little bit of ‘suffering’
reminds you of the real pain
that the revolutionary martial artists had to go through.
Understand that,
and you are deserving of freedom,
because,
let me tell you this…

If you fight to make yourself strong enough
and smart enough,
to retain freedom,
then you are deserving of freedom.

and learn the truth about fighting with weapons,
make yourself as strong as a 1776 colonist
and deserving of freedom.

Now,
whoever you are,
wherever you are,
tomorrow is a celebration of freedom,
it is not just for the US of A,
but for any person in the world
who believes that man should be free
that life should be lived without encumbrance
and that the spirit of mankind should prevail.

Professional Martial Arts Instructor Manual

Good Cinco de Mayo morning!
I love the US…
we get to celebrate independence twice!
July 4th and May 5th.
And that means we have twice the freedom
to work out twice as hard!

Now,
got a new book coming out.
I’ve been working on this for a while.
If anybody has wondered where I’ve been,
I’ve been sitting at the computer
pounding the keys madly,
making…
THE BEST AND MOST AUTHORITATIVE TOME
ON THE SUBJECT OF TEACHING THE MARTIAL ARTS
EVER!

In fact,
when you see what I’ve done
you will understand that this book sets a new standard.
Far beyond Black Belt,
far beyond Master,
and even…FAR BEYOND MASTER INSTRUCTOR!
Heck,
it’s even better than a Founder.

Let me give you a few facts on this book.
The book is 8 1/2 by 11.
Those are big pages,
especially compared to normal books.
There are 232 pages.
The book is JAMMED full of stuff.
There is a lot of old material,
pieces of the master instructor course,
the art of matrix karate from the matrix karate course,
drills and exercises from out of print books,
and a sh*tload of new stuff.

What the book is
is how I teach a person
from white belt to black belt.
All the tricks I use,
all the drills,
all the extra drills and how to make more.
and all in the right order.

Yes,
this is a very creative book,
it is not a MSMD book
(monkey see monkey do)
but rather a how to book that shows how,
and encourages one to create their own drills.
Use mine as the template,
configure to your art,
make new drills.
You’ll see how I do it,
how I break out of the same old same old
of the classical method,
to make the best martial artists in the world.

Now,
the inspiration for this book.

About twenty or so years ago
I had a few students
and no place to teach them.
So I walked into World Gym
and asked if I could rent a room.
They said no,
and hired me as a personal trainer.
A martial arts personal trainer.
I was a bit shocked,
to say the least.
They were paying me a couple of hundred a month
to teach students who were already paying me
sixty a month.
Sweet, eh?

So I taught for a while,
then I went and did other things.

A couple of years ago I decided to do this again.
A gym is a perfect place to find students,
and even dedicated students.
The people at a gym want to get fit,
they are more than willing to learn martial arts
if approached in the right way.
So I went to a gym,
asked the owner if he needed a trainer,
and he said no.
I blinked.
I had been talking to personal trainers
and they said there was a huge demand.
That if I was good,
I could make up to a hundred dollars an hour.
But the owner had said no to me.
Huh!

So I went to another gym,
nope.
Another one.
Nope.
No…no…no.
WTF?

So I managed to get ahold of a gym owner
and I asked him why,
and his answer surprised me
(though it shouldn’t have)
He said:
‘Martial Artists don’t make good trainers.
They don’t know how to run classes,
every art is different so there is no standard
and they just aren’t professional.’

Martial Artists don’t make good trainers.
Okay.
Let’s take it point by point.

They don’t know how to run classes?
But they have learned in classes,
they should know all about classes!
but they tended to drive students off,
costing the gym owner money.

Every art is different…well, yes,
and I could understand how that might make things difficult
for someone who wants to give his customers
a standard experience.

But the thing that REALLY got me was…
Martial Artists just aren’t professional.

That was the kicker.
Because I consider myself a totally professional martial artist!

But…how was the gym owner supposed to know that?
How was he to know that I knew enough arts
and could teach classical arts
in a totally standard manner?
How was he to know that I was different from all the others?
That I was a true professional?

Now,
here’s the thing:
gym owners have actually had this problem for a long time,
and not just with martial artists.
Back a couple of decades
and anybody who could lift a bit of iron
could call himself a personal trainer
and get away with it.
You had knuckleheads that were actually damaging clients!
And there was no standard of professionalism.

What was the solution?
The solution were the rise of companies
that gave trainers certification.

Todays trainers have to go through courses
which give very intense data
on how to teach
the types of exercises
musculature and skeletal structure,
cardio and aerobics and endurance vs resistance training
and nutrition and the structure of a muscle and…
and on and on and on.

And I know this is true
because I signed up for a course
and got a first hand look at what the training is like.

And there is absolutely nothing like it in the martial arts.

Nothing.

So I looked at the training manual of one company
and I wrote my own training manual.

I didn’t duplicate the whole thing on muscles and stuff,
you should do a personal trainer course on your own for that.
But I did lay out the martial arts
using my courses and a lot of new stuff
to create somebody who knows what a martial arts instructor has to know
and can actually teach it.

Never been anything like it before in the history of the Martial Arts.

Professional Martial Arts Instructor.

Now,
if you do this book,
actually, it is a course,
then you learn the martial arts from the inside out.
And,
you learn how to teach.
It’s how I teach,
and I have had a number of schools,
taught classes everywhere,
and they have all paid off.

So this is my answer to that gym owner’s remark,
that martial artists aren’t professional.

No, we aren’t,
but know we can be.

A person who does this book
and takes the test for it
will be certified,
and that means he can walk into ANY gym
and say
‘I’m a professional.’
He can show his certificate,
show the book he had to do,
and,
zingo bingo
you’re head of the line
for a job doing what you want to do,
for a job teaching martial arts.

And I wasn’t kidding,
here in Los Angeles,
people can make $100 an hour
teaching some of these big name people.
Easy.

Heck,
Bruce Lee was charging $300 an hour,
and that was back in the early 70s!

So,
the money is there,
and now the method to the money is there.

The only problem…
have you seen how expensive the personal trainer courses are?
We’re talking $500!
You get a book,
a test,
some sample questions,
but then you can get a job!

And,
my book,
it’s got pieces of several courses,
books,
books that are out of print,
new stuff,
and it’s all organized.
It’s lined up 1, 2, 3…
from white belt to black belt.

If you learn this stuff,
know how to smile to people,
then you can get a job.

So,
the book will be out officially
in a couple of weeks.
Right now I am ordering proofs,
getting editing and such,
and exploring POD methods (Print On Demand).
The price of a book like this,
full color,
this big
is about $30.
Then I’ve got to mail it.
Probably $20 bucks there.
But if somebody wants a proof,
I’ll probably charge $75.
It might be more,
I won’t know until the book is in the final stages of production
and I am quoted a price on proofs.
But I’m guessing $75 might be fair.
And the price,
once it is officially released,
will probably be over $100.
So this is a deal.

You think I won’t get it?
Ha!
I’ll get a company that does certification for personal trainers,
piggy back on them,
and it will sell like hotcakes.

After all,
it’s a path to a real fun job,
a break out from the same old same old hum drum 9 to 5.

But,
for the next week or two,
I’ll sell proofs.

You’ll have to be willing to wait a week or so to get it,
because the company has to mail it to me,
then I have to mail it to you.

And the only reason I’m willing to do this
is because I need feedback.
I need wins to put on a site,
I need people to tell me where I’ve made mistakes.

but,
there it is.

And,
let me emphasize one last thing…
a Black Belt is an expert
a Master is fantastic,
but that doesn’t mean they know how to teach,
it doesn’t mean they are professional.
So this book raises the standard.
This book creates martial artists that are better than a black belt, master, or whatever.
A fellow who can teach,
is responsible for the future of the martial arts.
It doesn’t matter how much you know
if you can’t pass it on.
So a Professional Martial Arts Instructor
is actually the highest rank possible.
Nothing higher.

Even a founder has to know how to teach and be professional.

So a PMAI is the highest rank there is.

Okay,
thanks for listening.
If you’re interested in picking up a proof of
Professional Martial Arts Instructor
send me an email at
aganzul@gmail.com

Proofs will probably be available in the next few days,
almost definitely by Monday.

A Simple Exercise for Sinking the Weight in the Martial Arts

Happy after Easter! Hope you don’t run over any eggs when you mow your lawn. Yuck!

Okay, here is one of the exercises I use, especially for kids, but great for anybody who wishes to find the true foundation of karate or any other martial art.

Grounding. It is when you sink your weight into the ground. Simply, you have to sink your weight, to attach the machine that is your body so that you can use that machine. This is basic mechanics.

I am always, when I teach forms, telling people to sink their weight. They have to bend both legs, feel the weight, let the weight reach the ground, so that the tan tien will create energy.

You don’t reach the ground, you have no energy. You have no real energy building inside your legs.

It’s funny, people doing boxing, kick boxing, modern tournament type freestyle, they bounce. They want to look like Bruce Lee. But before Bruce, everybody sank their weight, shifted their weight between their feet as they edged towards the opponent. It was the gunfighter mentality. Sink, edge forward, spring.

Nowadays, unfortunately, everybody has forgotten this. Everybody wants to bounce. Bouncing uses up muscles. Sinking the weight creates…endless energy. Energy that can be used to spring like a cat.

Okay, the best stance for teaching this is the horse stance. The horse stance can be used in freestyle, quite easily, but the true glory of the horse stance is simply for the creation of energy.

So you have the kids face in a direction. You say back, they pop their horse stance to the rear. You say right, they pop it to the right side, left is the other side, front is back to the front.

When I say ‘POP,’ that is key. Here’s the secret, you must NOT let the body raise in the air. The head must not bob up and down.

You must ‘swap’ your feet so fast that you don’t have time to fall, and you must do so without popping up. This is not an exercise in falling, it is an exercise in moving so fast you don’t have time to fall.

The secret here is that you have to use the tan tien. To properly pop your stance, to move both feet so they start at the same time, and land at the same time, you must explode from the tan tien to make this happen.

simple exercise, eh? And, when teaching a class, it’s sort of fun. Kids love it. They’ll bob up and down all over the place, but you just go around and hold a hand over their head, and tell them not to touch it.

Works every time. Here’s a link to the actual forms and exercises that I use to build Chi.

The Deadly Pinkie in Martial Arts Fighting!

Hey, I thought it was time to talk about the deadliest weapon in the martial arts. The pinkie.

Now hold on, don’t get that look on your face, let me explain.

If you grab somebody’s pinkie in a lock, like holding the pinkie vertical with your thumb to the base, and start applying a bit of pressure, you hear an ow.

The fellow has been subdued by a pinkie. He is in pain, he is thinking of his pinkie, well, he is thinking of the pain where his pinkie used to be. He goes up on his tip toes, he dances, and, here comes the strange part… if you threw his pinkie off a cliff, he would go with it, screaming and shrieking, so glad that the pain has stopped… and then he realizes he’s falling hundreds of feet to his death!

And it was his pinkie that did it.

Now, there is truth to this. Yes, there will be the fellow who understands and would sacrifice his pinkie that his body might live, but these fellows are few and far between.

The Pinkie Death Throw. Moo hah hah!

But, that leads to something else.

Take a pin, stick it…HARD…into your finger. You jerk back with a howl. DAMN that hurt.

Isn’t that funny? You would think that a small body part would only hurt a little. But your whole body seemed to feel the pain of the pinkie.

Now let’s turn this whole concept around. What if you hit somebody in the nose and smashed it like…it was a pinkie.

Weird.

But if you did it the right way the whole body would feel the pain of the nose.

The trick is, nobody does it the right way. Everybody hits like they are trying to displace the whole body. Move the whole body in space. But what if you hit a small part of the body, broke a rib…like it was a pinkie. Hit somebody in the belly, but only like you are…breaking a pinkie.

I know, it sounds stupid. It sounds like a comic book, but…but there’s this little, niggling pice of WTF? in your mind right now.

So think about it like this. If you hit somebody in the chest, like you are trying to move their whole body, then the whole body feels it, and pushes energy into that spot. Strike is negated.

But if you hit precise, focus on a pinkie sized area, AND IGNORED THE REST OF THE BODY! It would be like breaking a pinkie. The body couldn’t get behind it, and yet the whole body would feel it.

That is focus in the martial arts. Real focus. Focus beyond tightening the fist in space… focus of energy in a precise spot on the opponent’s body.

So what got me thinking about this? I was watching youtube. I was specifically looking for Heian Five techniques. I came across this lady champ, did her own series, incredibly good looking kata, and yet, when she focused her punch, it wobbled all over the place.

All the muscles in the body tightened, but it was more like they spasmed. Not like the whole body entered into her fingers.

And there were other things wrong with her form. The back leg of her back stance pointed to far to the side, like it was a half horse/half back stance. There were timing gaps in her motions, very significant, but broke the CBM (Coordinated Body Motion) of her form.

And I thought about the way we did form at the Kang Duk Won. Every move was a simple move from one place to another, designed for use in a fight, no timing gaps designed to impress tournament judges.

So, I was saddened. Fantastic champ, knew her stuff, but the stuff she knew was wrong.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure she gets all sorts of benefits from the forms, and she is a champ, probably knows her freestyle like crazy.

BUT, she will never understand perfection of form, or even understand what perfection of form is, or that it can be.

Well, I’ve defined it for you in the various courses. Shown the angles and motions, described the how and why so it can work in freestyle.

But if you’re interested in classical karate, which is a good base for ANY art, then try Temple Karate.

Temple Karate is the old Kang Duk Won forms I learned almost 50 years ago. It was 90% perfect then, and I’ve done little matrixing tweaks, to bring it to 100%.

A New Master Instructor!

Happy work out to you!
And,

Congratulation to Master Instructor Tony Burnett!

Here’s his win.

Dear Mr. Case,

Thank you for assisting me with our new Defensive Tactics class in the Hurst- Euless- Bedford Independent School District. I have thoroughly examined the recommended Blinding Steel material, the 40 techniques found in the Matrix Kung Fu and the Master Instructor Course with much excitement. I know the matrix strategies you have developed will allow my students to progress much faster and with better understanding than anything else out there. As a retired police officer that is now teaching criminal justice students, I realize how important use of force issues are to the communities we serve. I believe its one of the most important topics covered so I began a search to find courses that would help my students learn and apply knowledge of disarming, joint locks and standing take downs to name a few. After reading many positive reviews of your system, I purchased Matrixed Aikido, and I learned as much from it in four days as I did in 25 years of training in Aikido for DT!. After that course, I purchased the core set that included Matrix Kung Fu, Matrix Karate and the Masters Instructors Course and became even more impressed. The Blinding Steel course (matrixed weapon systems) has been my favorite so far and is an excellent supplement to the the Monkey Boxing (Matrixed Kung Fu) course. I am so thankful that I found your courses and learned the strategy and benefit of matrixing the arts. You have contributed more to so many, including me and my students, than you will ever realize. Now, I want to continue this journey for myself, my students and the criminal justice industry that I serve with your blessing. I am requesting an endorsement to be a Master Instructor so I may continue to explain the benefits of matrixing the arts and apply those benefits to the arts and subsequently my students.

Thank you for considering my request as well as your assistance with the material for my students.

Respectfully,

Tony Burnett
Law and Public Safety Teacher

Well done, Tony,
and thank you for being a martial artist.

And,
Tony makes an interesting statement:

‘I realize how important use of force issues are to the communities we serve.’

Your first duty is to make sure you can defend yourself.
Beyond that,
you should cultivate the ability
to take care of yourself
with as little harm to an attacker as possible.

Some people blink when I say this,
some people think you should just maim an attacker,
other people think you shouldn’t defend yourself
if you are going to hurt somebody.

The truth, as usual,
lies somewhere in between.

Here’s an interesting oddity,
if you train as if you are going to kill somebody,
you might reach the point where you don’t have to.

Anyway,
the point here is that people should learn the martial arts,
they should be able to protect themselves,
they should be able to protect others.

Remember,
if you can stop a fight
without a blow being struck,
then you demonstrating the highest level of martial arts.

Here’s the link,
should you wish to learn the truth about the martial arts

I love stupid people,
they make me feel so smart.
It’s true that you will see a matrixing principle here and there,
I accumulated matrixing and organized it
as a result of examining the various martial arts.
But,
matrixing has never been seen.
And the fellow who wrote this scathing review
is a fellow who has never seen matrixing.
He saw a video
and made a judgement on all that I do.

Look,
there are two kinds of people in the world,
those with opinions,
and those with facts.

People with opinions are like Beavis and Butthead,
they speak without knowing anything about what they are speaking of.

People with facts get it right,
or at least are on the right track,
assuming that they continue to get facts,
and understand how to analyze and organize what they are getting.

So,
what is matrixing?
Matrixing is a logic.
And,
it is a science.
It organizes the martial arts,
and causes the matrixing student
to re-evaluate the martial arts.
To see the arts as a complete field of science.

Yes,
there is an art to applying the science,
but it is still a science,
and if one knows the science
it gets that much easier to apply the art.

The one thing that a writer tries to do
is to get the ideas from his mind
into the mind of the reader.

This is one of the most difficult things in the world.
It requires that the writer says what he says
in such a manner
that the idea of which he is speaking
duplicates itself in the reader’s head.

That is what I’ve been trying to do for over 40 years of matrixing.
That’s why I keep writing and writing.
some people get it,
but not all.
I need ALL people to get what I am saying with matrixing.
I need the idea of matrixing that I see,
to become the same idea in the reader’s heads.

An interesting problem.
But I think this book solves it.

In this book I simply took all the matrixes I have written,
and put them in an order,
from beginning to end.

So you see what the idea behind matrixing is.
You see the inspiration.
You see how it developed
from concept to concept
by inspecting the actual graphs of the science.

A picture is worth a thousand words.

Each graph or matrix
represents an evolutionary step.
Each graph or matrix
represents a concept,
and the concepts are listed in scientific order,
from simple to complex,
with formulas discovered.

This is NOT a book of technique.
It is a book of concept,
and if you actually do it,
you will get the idea of matrixing.
You will see the exact sequence of ideas and steps
it took to develop matrixing.

And,
unless you are like Butthead,
like the fellow who wrote the wonderful and enlightened comment,
you will see the truth of the martial arts.

You will see
the total and entire concept
that matrixing is.

Then you just have to practice and drill and work your heart out.
Easy, eh?